In which year was the Dronacharya Award instituted?

The correct answer is D, Subramanian Raman. He received the Dronacharya Award of 2021 in the Regular category for table tennis, the award given to coaches whose trainees reach the podium at the Olympic, Asian, Commonwealth or World Championship level. Options A and B, Manika Batra and Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, are players and not coaches, and they are put here because both are India’s leading table tennis names of the same years; Manika Batra won the Commonwealth Games singles gold in 2018. Option C, Mouma Das, is also a player, a long-serving international who received the Arjuna Award. The distinction the question rests on is therefore the class of award: the Dronacharya is for coaches, the Arjuna and the Khel Ratna for players, so a player’s name can never answer a Dronacharya question.

The correct answer is B, Viswanathan Anand. The award was instituted in 1991–92 and the chess grandmaster received it in that very first year, which is the fact papers return to most often. Option D, Karnam Malleswari, the weightlifter, holds a related first: she was the first woman to receive the Khel Ratna, in 1994–95, and candidates who remember one first and not the other are caught here. Option A, Leander Paes, the tennis player, received the award in 1996–97, the year after his Olympic bronze at Atlanta. Option C, Sachin Tendulkar, received it in 1997–98. All four are genuine recipients, so the question is settled by the order of the years rather than by the fame of the names, and the order to hold is Anand, Malleswari, Paes, Tendulkar.

The correct answer is A, 1961. The Arjuna Award is the oldest of the national sports awards and honours a sportsperson for consistently outstanding performance over the four years before the award; the recipient is given a bronze statuette of Arjuna, a scroll of honour and a cash prize. Option B, 1985, is the year the Dronacharya Award for coaches began. Option C, 1991, points to the Khel Ratna, instituted in 1991–92 and now named after Major Dhyan Chand. Option D, 2002, is the year of the Dhyan Chand Award for lifetime achievement in sport. The four years therefore belong to four different awards, and a candidate who learns them as one sequence — 1961, 1985, 1991–92, 2002 — can answer any question in this family. One more detail is asked beside the year: the number of Arjuna Awards given in a year is limited, and the statuette is of Arjuna, the archer of the Mahabharata, which is the clue in the name itself.

The correct answer is C, coaches who have trained medal winners. Instituted in 1985, the Dronacharya Award honours coaches whose trainees have won medals at the Olympic, Asian or Commonwealth Games or at a World Championship, and it is given in two categories, Regular and Lifetime. Option A describes the Dhyan Chand Award, instituted in 2002 for lifetime achievement, which recognises a player’s contribution including the work done after retirement. Option B describes the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Trophy, from 1956–57, the only one of these honours that goes to an institution of learning. Option D describes the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puraskar of 2009, which is given to companies, sports control boards and voluntary bodies. The name itself is the clue, since Dronacharya was the teacher of archery in the Mahabharata.

The correct answer is B, Major Dhyan Chand. In August 2021 the Government renamed the country’s highest sporting honour the Major Dhyan Chand Khel Ratna Award, after the hockey player whose teams won Olympic gold at Amsterdam in 1928, Los Angeles in 1932 and Berlin in 1936. Only the name changed; the criteria, the selection committee and the procedure stayed as they were. Option A, Milkha Singh, the sprinter who came fourth in the 400 metres at Rome in 1960, has no national award named after him. Option C, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, gives his name to the Statue of Unity and to the sports complex named for him, not to this award. Option D, Balbir Singh Sr., was a great hockey centre forward and a triple Olympic gold medallist, but the award does not carry his name.